


One Wrong Too Many

by zelda_zee



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 07:05:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7881313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zelda_zee/pseuds/zelda_zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sayid gets Sun out of a tight spot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Wrong Too Many

**Author's Note:**

> Through "There’s No Place Like Home" (the S4 finale). First posted for the 2008 Lost Summer Luau.

Sun flies to Los Angeles for a meeting with Widmore. She’s close, she knows she is. She almost has him. The night she arrives, he cancels, then calls the next morning to reschedule for later that evening. Sun thinks she hears something funny in his voice, but she goes anyway. She has a gun in the pocket of her coat, but it’s just a weight at her side. It doesn’t bring her any real comfort.

The address he gives her is in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The building looks like a warehouse. It’s dark at this hour and there’s no one else around. She hasn’t felt like this since the island – the sure knowledge that something isn’t right sitting cold in her stomach. She should turn back, but she’s come too far now. They’re too close to success for her to back down.

Inside, there are stacks of crates, some kind of old machinery. The building is dim, too few fluorescent lights high above, sputtering and buzzing. At first she sees no one, then she hears a noise farther in.

“Hello? Mr. Widmore?” she calls, her hand dipping into the pocket where her gun is.

She catches movement out of the corner of her eye, but it’s already too late. There’s a something cold and hard pressing against the back of her skull, the sound of a hammer being cocked. Her hand is knocked away from her coat pocket before she can pull out her gun and someone else pulls it out for her and it clatters to the floor.

A man steps out from the shadows. Tall, thin, bald, with very dark skin. His eyes are large and bloodshot. He looks elongated, alien.

“Ms. Kwon,” he says. “I would say it is a pleasure to meet you, but our acquaintance will be so brief that I will hardly be able to judge if that is so.” He spreads his hands apologetically. “My name is Matthew Abaddon.”

There are three of them, the man speaking, the one with the gun to her head and another, standing a short distance away, arms crossed. The two other than Abaddon look like thugs, big, muscular, scowling.

Sun says nothing. There is nothing she can say that will change anything that’s going to happen, so she waits, heart pounding. She thinks of Ji Yeon, hopes her mother will take her somewhere, keep her safe.

“Mr. Widmore sends his regards,” Abaddon is saying. “He would have liked to have been here, but he was called away on an urgent matter.” Abaddon gives her a long, assessing look, and she thinks there is admiration in it. “Not many people are able to fool Mr. Widmore,” he says finally. “You did better than most who have tried, if that is any consolation.” It’s not, actually. Sun wonders briefly what gave her away, though that hardly matters now. The game is over, and she has lost.

There’s a flicker of movement in the shadows, the glint of metal, air stirring against her skin, a sudden gurgling noise from the man holding the gun to her head. The sound of a gunshot rends the silence and Abaddon’s eyes just have time to widen before he jerks back and falls, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The remaining thug is bringing his gun up, but another shot goes off behind her just as he fires, and he’s down, his hands clutching at his neck.

Sun whirls around, stunned, not knowing what she’ll see, not prepared for what she does. Sayid is standing not three feet behind her, a gun in one hand. At his feet is the body of the man who’d been holding her, a knife protruding from his back. She sees blood on Sayid’s shirt and she’s not sure whose it is.

“We should leave now,” he says. His voice is calm, unruffled, as if he hasn’t just murdered three men and saved her life in the process. He squats beside the body and wrenches the knife free, then wipes it clean on the dead man’s shirt and slides it under the sleeve of his leather jacket, into the scabbard that she can see peeking out from beneath his cuff when it is pushed up his forearm.

She is too shocked to move, or to speak, completely confused, dizzy with incomprehension. She had thought she knew what she was doing, but in the space of a few moments she’s been thrown totally off balance. She has no idea why Sayid is here, how he knew what would happen.

All she can say is, “Sayid?” She sounds breathless and afraid, and if she wasn’t so at a loss that would bother her.

His lip quirks. It’s not really a smile, more of a grimace, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “It is I. Now, come. We must leave immediately.” He holds out his hand, the left one. The right one is still holding his gun, and there is blood dripping from his fingers.

“You are hurt,” she says. The bullet must have hit him.

“Later.” He takes her hand, pulls her after him. He’s moving fast, dragging her along. Her body feels sluggish and uncoordinated, like it doesn’t want to move, then suddenly there’s a surge of adrenaline and she’s running. His car is right outside and they tumble into it. He hands her the gun.

“Shoot anyone who comes after us.”

He peels out, accelerating so fast she’s slammed into the back of her seat. She’s not sure what kind of a car he’s got, but it’s sleek and black and powerful. He drives with focus and precision, so fast that it makes her heart beat high in her throat.

She keeps a sharp lookout, but nobody follows them. It would seem Abaddon was confident enough that he felt no need to station anyone outside.

Once they’re back on more traveled roads, Sayid slows, keeping to the speed limit. Sun doesn’t know L.A. well enough to be able to tell where they’re going. There’s a GPS unit on the dashboard, but Sayid doesn’t consult it. He seems to know the route by heart although Sun wouldn’t think that he’d be that familiar with this city.

“Sayid,” she says, finally feeling herself calm enough to speak. She reaches out and touches his arm, fingers brushing soft leather. There is blood on the steering wheel and on the gear shift. “We should go to a hospital. You are injured.”

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “It looks worse than it is,” he says. The tone of his voice brooks no argument. “And a hospital would be most unwise.”

“But you are bleeding. We should –”

“We will stop when it is safer,” he says shortly and she falls silent, feeling strangely rebuked. “Can I see your cell phone?” he asks, holding out his hand.

It’s in her pocket. She gives it to him, then cries out in protest as he lowers the window and tosses it onto the asphalt.

“Why did you do that?!” she demands angrily.

“They’ll use it to track you,” he explains. “We can get you a disposable one later.”

She thinks of all the numbers she had programmed in. There are only a couple that she knows by heart, her mother’s and Ben’s.

She has a thousand questions, but she settles on the most obvious one first. “How did you know? What were you doing there?”

“Ben sent me,” he says.

“Ben?!” She blinks, feeling stupid, feeling like her brain isn’t working properly. “Ben sent you?!”

He glances at her, taking in the disbelief painted plainly across her features. “Yes, Ben.” He looks at her again, a single brow raised, one corner of his mouth quirked in a humorless smile. “I take it he did not inform you of our association – his and mine.” She just shakes her head wordlessly. “No, I suppose he would not. He would not feel you would need to know.”

“I – I have been working with him,” Sun says weakly. “You have been working with him too?”

“No,” says Sayid. He readjusts his hands on the steering wheel. Some of the blood on his hand has dried. It makes his dark skin look even darker. “I have been working for him. There is a difference.”

“Is there?” she says dryly. “I am not sure there is a difference, with Ben.”

“If someone were about to kill me, he would not send anyone to help,” Sayid states. “That is the difference.”

Sun is silent for a moment, processing this new information. Sayid has been working for Ben. She can hardly credit it. She knows how Sayid hated him. But then, she did too.

“How long?” she asks.

“Since Nadia.” He says it as if it explains everything. Maybe it does.

“What do you do for him?” she asks, though she has a terrible feeling that she already knows.

“Whatever he tells me,” says Sayid. She stares at him, she can’t help it. A Sayid who would do Ben’s bidding is so at odds with her memories of the man. So many things went so terribly wrong for them – having to leave people behind, the lie that’s eaten away at their souls, Jin’s death and Nadia’s – yet Sun thinks that maybe this – Sayid being Ben’s willing servant – his hired killer, for that is what he must be – is just one wrong thing too many.

Sun thinks of Jin, how he was in her father’s power for all those years, how he lost his sense of who he was, became someone else, someone she barely recognized. It is the same with Sayid, she realizes with a sudden rush of clarity. She can see it plainly. It is just the same.

She looks out the window. They’re on a freeway, she has no idea which one. The warehouse was in Long Beach but they’ve already left that area behind. Traffic is light this late at night, and they’re making good time, even though Sayid keeps the speedometer hovering right around 60. She thinks they’re heading north, but then they merge onto another freeway and she can see the dark shape of the foothills in front of them, so she thinks maybe east. They pass miles of housing developments springing up out of the desert, identical houses marching in rows up to the base of the hills.

She turns toward Sayid, really looks at him, now that she feels calm enough to take him in. In profile he looks much the same – the little scowl of concentration on his face when he drives just as she recalls from when he was absorbed in fixing some recalcitrant bit of machinery back on the island. Same prominent nose, same sensual lips, same beard, just a bit more neatly trimmed. His hair is different, and that’s the most startling thing about him from this angle. It puzzles her, why he would go to the trouble of changing it. Sun had always liked his hair. She had noticed, of course. Just because she had been with Jin, content and in love, didn’t mean she did not have eyes in her head. There were attractive men on that island. She would have had to have been blind not to notice that, and foolish not to appreciate it.

So, looking at Sayid from the passenger seat, she can almost pretend he looks the same. It’s his eyes that seem different, and the still, empty expression on his face, and his voice which is just as pleasing to hear, but somehow flat and impersonal. She doesn’t know what it means. She wonders if it’s grief. She wonders if that’s how she looks and sounds.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“There is a safe house in Palm Desert. It is only two hours away.” Sun thinks of her belongings, back at her hotel. “Your things are in the back.” She looks into the back seat and there is her suitcase, her laptop bag. He must have gone to the hotel sometime this evening. She doesn’t know how he would have gotten into her room, but she guesses such things are not beyond him.

“Don’t use your laptop to access the internet,” Sayid warns. “Not until I have checked it.”

She agrees. Sayid is the expert here. She’ll go along with him, since he clearly knows what he’s doing. Realizing this gives her a feeling of déjà vu.

“Thank you, Sayid,” she says.

“It took only a few moments.” He shrugs. “It is nothing.”

“No.” Sun touches his shoulder, carefully. “Thank you for saving my life.”

For a moment he says nothing, then very quietly, “You are welcome.”

It is after midnight when they reach Palm Desert. The house is nondescript but luxurious, a large, new home in a gated community. Sayid pulls the car into the garage, closes the door behind them. Inside, the impression of wealth and comfort continues, though the furnishings are unremarkable. The home gives the impression of having been professionally staged in order to sell. Sayid programs the alarm system, then disappears upstairs. Sun puts her bags down in the living room and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. When Sayid does not reappear after a few moments she goes in search of him.

She finds him in the master bath, a room as large as the bedrooms in her flat in Seoul. Everything in this house is pointlessly spacious.

Sayid has his shirt off and he’s dabbing at the bullet wound in his shoulder.

“Sayid!” she exclaims. “You said it wasn’t that bad!” There’s dried blood staining his chest, painted in streaks down his arm. “You should have at least let me drive,” she scolds, annoyed that he kept the severity of his injury from her. “There is no point in being a martyr. Sit.”

“I can take care of this, Sun,” he says. “I have done it before.”

“Sit,” she repeats, giving him a stern look, her hands on her hips. Sayid smiles at her. It’s brief and small, but this time it reaches his eyes. He sits on the toilet seat and lets her take over. Sun hesitates just for an instant when she sees a bullet scar in his other shoulder, near his chest. That one is new, since the island, and it was made by someone who was aiming at his heart. She takes a breath and bends to her task. It is not her business, so she does not ask him about it.

The bullet passed through the muscle cleanly, but she knows there’s a risk of infection, no matter how thorough she is. “You should see a doctor,” she says.

“That is not an option.” He looks up at her. “My face is too recognizable. There would be too many questions.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you became an assassin,” she says. Sayid looks at her, eyes wide. “Did you expect me to pretend I don’t understand what you are?” She covers the wound with a square of gauze and tapes it firmly down. “I am not interested in pretending, Sayid.” He nods, his lips pressed together, but he won’t meet her eyes. “Jin was the same, did you know that?” He looks at her then, and she can’t read his expression. He is better at hiding his thoughts than she remembers, but maybe that is the result of what has happened to him since she saw him last.

“Ah. No. No, I did not know.” He thinks for a moment. “I remember that it surprised me that he could handle a gun so well.”

She applies the final piece of tape to the bandage. “Jin hid it from me for a long time, what his job was. He worked for my father. I was never supposed to find out. But I did. I almost left him, right before the crash. It was all planned out, my escape. Of course, the island changed everything.” She stands back and studies her handiwork. “So, you see, I will not allow myself to be fooled again. I refuse to pretend not to know that you kill people for Ben.”

“Widmore’s people,” Sayid says urgently, his voice low and breathless. “Only Widmore’s people, Sun. Only because it is the only way to keep them safe – the ones we left behind. I would not, otherwise. You must believe that.”

“How do you know they are Widmore’s people, Sayid? How do you know they need to die?”

“Ben tells me,” he says simply.

“And you trust him?”

“I have to.”

She supposes that is true. He’s in too deep now to do anything else.

She wets a washcloth and starts scrubbing the blood from his skin. He sways a bit, his eyelids drooping, then opening again, his injury, the long drive, the late hour finally catching up to him. Sun is exhausted as well. They fall silent. To her surprise, Sayid sits quietly and lets her wash him. It’s strange to touch a man so intimately. Even with the washcloth between her hand and Sayid’s skin, this is more contact than she’s had with a man since Jin died.

She washes his chest, his shoulder, his arm, even his armpit where blood collected in the crease. She tries to stay focused on what she is doing, but his skin is soft and smooth when her fingers brush it by accident, and his muscles are just as defined as they were on the island, more so, even. She thinks that he has lost weight since then. He seems slighter, less solid, for all his wiry strength.

“I am sorry about Nadia,” she says at one point.

“Thank you,” he replies, his face tightening slightly. For a second, she thinks he will say something more, but he remains silent.

She helps him to bed, because when he stands he nearly collapses to the floor. She lays him on the mattress and he’s out, unconscious before she even straightens up. It worries her, because she knows he must be at the end of his strength. He’d never show such weakness otherwise.

She pulls off his shoes and socks, then his trousers. He’s wearing satin boxers, but she doesn’t allow herself anything but the most cursory glance, pulling the covers over him quickly. It would feel wrong to look at him when he’s asleep. She places her palm gently on his forehead and he makes a little sound, a whimper. He’s warm, but it seems normal, nothing out of the ordinary. She strokes lightly over his hair, lets it slide through her fingers. It’s soft, silky, the way Jin’s was.

She thinks she should watch over him, but she can’t keep her eyes open. She doesn’t want to leave him alone though, so she compromises by toeing off her shoes and climbing onto the bed beside him. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep in this unfamiliar house, still wearing the clothes she’s had on all day, with the strangeness of a man next to her in the bed.

She awakens to a room awash with sunlight. Sayid is beside her, still asleep. He looks pale – more pale than usual, since he’s usually anything but pale. But when she feels his forehead, she is relieved to find no trace of fever.

She gets up, finds her suitcase, showers, changes clothes. In the kitchen she finds coffee in the freezer. The refrigerator and the cupboards are stocked with food. She has a cup of coffee and some toast, wandering around the big house, trying to figure out what happens next.

She goes upstairs to check on Sayid and he opens his eyes when her palm is resting on his forehead. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t take her hand away, but she doesn’t. She leaves it there and then she slides her fingers into his hair, combing through it like she did the night before, again and again. He watches her for a moment, his face sleepy and blank and then he closes his eyes. When she draws her hand away, he sighs softly.

She brings him orange juice and tea and toast on a tray. He eats it all so she makes him eggs and he eats that too. It pleases her, that he cleans his plate, which is ridiculous. They’ve hardly had a real conversation. She feels like he’s a stranger to her, but every once in a while she catches a glimpse of the man she recognizes and it’s as if she’s known him forever.

He sleeps all day. She’s not sure what to do, so she does nothing other than sit beside him. She finds a bookcase in one of the bedrooms, picks a book she remembers Sawyer reading on the island, Watership Down. It’s a strange book, seemingly about rabbits. She’s not sure if she’s understanding it correctly.

She thinks about calling Ben. Surely he needs to know what has happened. But then she’s not sure she should without Sayid’s knowledge. Anyway, now that she’s been compromised she doubts Ben has any use for her and she’s not sure yet if she has any use for him. Their plans, everything they’ve been working toward, are in shambles. She will have to figure out another way, start over from scratch.

Sayid comes downstairs that evening, moving carefully, his right arm held protectively against his body. His hair is wet from the shower. He’s wearing a shirt, but it’s not buttoned. He hands her the gauze.

“Do you mind?” he asks, apparently giving up the pretense of preferring to treat himself.

He sits on the sofa and she slips his shirt off his shoulders. It feels like she’s undressing him and that makes her uncomfortable but it also makes her body fill with shivery heat. When she’s finished changing the dressing she says she will make him dinner. He moves to sit at the kitchen counter while she heats up soup, puts bread and some cheese on a plate for him.

“We cannot stay here,” he says. “We must leave tonight.”

“Not tonight,” she says firmly. “You are not yet recovered enough to go anywhere, Sayid.” She stirs the soup, staring into the pan. “I thought you said this is a safe house.”

“They will be looking for us. There are safer places.”

“I don’t understand.” She turns to look at him. “We are on the run now?” When he says nothing she continues. “But nothing has changed for you. I am the one they are looking for.” She pauses and takes a deep breath, trying to fathom the way everything has changed from just a day ago. “I cannot expect anything more from Ben, can I?”

“Ben still needs you,” Sayid says. “But now, with Widmore on to you, he doesn’t need you in the same way. So, no, I would not expect much from him. Not at the moment. But he wants to keep you safe from Widmore. Those were my instructions.”

“To keep me safe from Widmore?” Sun knows her incredulity is obvious.

“Yes.” He sits quietly, hands folded on the counter. When she doesn’t move, his eyes flick to the pan on the stove. “Is that ready? I find that I am very hungry.”

She ignores him. “You are supposed to keep me safe? Are you my bodyguard now?” There’s an edge of annoyance in her voice, but if he notices it, he makes no sign.

“Until I am told differently, yes, I will keep you safe.”

“And what if you are told differently, Sayid? What if Ben decides I am no longer useful, that I know too much? Would you do as you are told then?”

His eyes darken for a moment and she doesn’t know with what emotion, but it’s emotion she sees, she knows that much, and she feels gratified and relieved to know that she can elicit it.

“That will not happen,” he says calmly. “So you do not need to wonder. Sun?” He gestures toward the stove where the soup is about to boil over. She grabs it off the stove and stands for a moment, holding the pan.

She has the sudden urge to throw the pan of hot soup in his face. It angers her that after everything that happened to them, after every terrible, brutal, painful thing that was visited upon them – things that they had no control over, no say in whatsoever – that Sayid has willingly participated in - colluded in – his own undoing, and he doesn’t even seem to be aware of it. It’s pointless and pathetic and it makes her stomach clench in helpless rage.

It’s not that she doesn’t understand it, she does. She understands it all too well and it makes her sick to think that it doesn’t have to be like this. He didn’t have to sacrifice himself.

The island has taken enough sacrifices. It doesn’t need to have Sayid too.

She pours soup into a bowl and places it in front of him, makes them both cups of tea. By the time she takes a seat beside him, the anger has passed.

“I did not call Ben yet,” Sun tells him. “I was not sure what to say.”

“There is no hurry,” he assures her. “Everything went according to plan. I will call him tonight.”

“You were shot,” she reminds him. “That is hardly according to plan.”

“The fact that I was shot did not affect anything that happened, therefore it went according to plan,” Sayid says. His voice is patient, as if he is explaining something to someone who is a bit slow. “If I had been incapacitated and Widmore’s men had gotten the upper hand, it would be different.”

“I do not understand how you can completely discount your injury,” she argues. “You act as though it does not even matter.”

“It does not.” He takes a sip of soup. “It has no effect on anything. It doesn’t matter in terms of our plans.”

“Well, it matters to me,” Sun says vehemently.

That stops him. He blinks at her and she can tell that he’s trying to formulate a response and failing. “It should not,” he says finally. “You should not let it. I have not seen you in – in – It should not matter.”

“Well it does,” she states flatly. “Get used to it.”

Sayid is still watching her with a strange expression on his face and it suddenly makes her sad that the fact that she still cares after all this time has thrown him so completely.

There is a question that she has been dreading asking, but she cannot put it off any longer. “Sayid – what should I do about Ji Yeon? If I fly home – will I be able to make it? They will be looking for me at the airports, won’t they?”

Sayid gives her a long look. “We have her, Sun.” She feels her eyes widen and she starts to protest, but Sayid continues, not giving her a chance. “We had to. She is safe, and your mother with her and Jin’s father as well. They would have used them to lure you out, so we had to move first, you must understand.”

“Ben has them?” she asks, aghast.

“Not Ben personally, no. Our people have moved them somewhere safe, that is all. Can you see that it must be this way? Think about it, Sun. They are where you are vulnerable.”

She knows he is right, but still, she cannot accept it. She shakes her head vehemently and he grabs her hand, holding on tightly.

“I need to see Ji Yeon,” she insists. She can feel the tears standing in her eyes, threatening to fall. She is shaking, her hand trembling in Sayid’s grasp. “Sayid, I need to see her. I need her with me.”

“That is impossible,” he says softly, unmoved by her desperation. “Surely you see that. Having her with you would only endanger her. She is somewhere safe, Sun. You must trust me about this.”

Sun stares at him, wondering if she can. There was a time when she trusted him implicitly, when she would have laid her life in his hands without hesitation. Now she wonders if this man standing before her is even the same person.

He seems to read her thoughts, because he smiles just a bit and she thinks it’s the saddest smile she has ever seen.

“I know that I have changed.” He looks down for a moment. “I know that –” He grimaces as if what he was about to say is painful to him, then meets her eyes. “You can still trust me, Sun. That has not changed, even if everything else has.”

It’s more of an admission than she’s gotten from him yet, and she has the feeling that it cost him something to say it. She wants to assure him that not everything has changed, that he is still the man she remembers, that beneath the cold veneer of the killer beats the heart of the warm, passionate, headstrong man she knew. But she does not say that. She does not know if it is true.

“I would not let any harm come to your child.” His voice drops and he says quietly. “To Jin’s child.”

Sayid meets her eyes, wincing as if he expects her to hit him, but he doesn’t look away. She stares at him for a long time, her hand held tightly in his, looking for the man she knew. She looks, but she isn’t sure that she finds him, she isn’t sure that he’s still in there. She will just have to believe in him, she realizes. She will have to have faith that there is still enough left of who he was before that he will not let her down.

“I believe you,” she says, and it’s not a lie. There’s so much about Sayid that has changed, so much she doesn’t know about who he is now, but she can't believe that he would willingly endanger her child. “I trust you, Sayid.”

They leave early the next morning. Sun insists on driving and to her surprise Sayid acquiesces. They are heading to another safe house, this one somewhere in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Sayid says it is a safer house, impregnable, a fortress. They will wait there until Ben tells them otherwise.

“Why does Ben care whether Widmore finds me or not?” she asks. “I thought I’d outlived my usefulness.”

She glances over at him to find him watching her and she is struck by his expression, how it is less guarded now than it was even a day ago.

“Ben needs you because we have to go back,” Sayid says. He watches her steadily as it sinks in. The odd thing is how there’s no sense of surprise or denial. A feeling of calm settles over her, as if she’s always known this and was just waiting for someone to put it into words.

“All of us,” Sayid continues. “All of us who were there.”

Sun nods, turning back to the road ahead. Silence fills the car. It’s a strange, pregnant moment, one in which many things are communicated, though little is said out loud. She takes a breath and it shudders in her throat.

“I knew that we would go back,” she says. “I think I knew that was what Ben was planning all along.” She did know it, even if she had never examined that knowledge too closely.

They pull over at a rest stop a few miles past the Arizona border. Scrub desert surrounds them, arid and monochromatic, the flatness broken by sage and tumbleweed, cacti and bare white-barked trees with twisted branches. Sun finds the surroundings beautiful, clean and uncomplicated. The sky above is deep blue, cloudless, and the air feels pure. It’s hot already, and the sun isn’t even high in the sky.

She walks a short distance out, past the little cluster of buildings, and as long as she doesn’t turn around to see the parking lot and the smattering of cars baking in the sun and the highway beyond, she might as well be alone, far out in the desert, miles from the nearest town.

Sayid comes to stand silently beside her and her awareness shifts to include him. She doesn’t think she’s ever spent this much time with someone and yet said so little. The silences between them don’t put her on edge; sometimes they're even comforting. She and Sayid understand each other – not everything about each other, of course – but they understand why they are the way they are. She understands his grief and his guilt, the dark, hungry things that eat at his soul. Even if she thinks he’s chosen the wrong path, she understands why he made that choice. She recalls him as he was on the island, fearless and vital and foolishly brave, but also surprisingly kind and affectionate. She refuses to believe that man is gone.

She thinks of Jin again, of how he came back to her once she had given up hope. She will not give up hope for Sayid, even if he has given up hope for himself.

“It is beautiful, I think,” Sayid says. She looks at him, but he is staring out into the distance. The sun shines on his face and it makes his skin glow like burnished copper. A breeze plucks a strand of hair from his neatly coiffed head and blows it around and when it drops, it is no longer smooth and straight, holding just a hint of that distinctive curl.

“Will it be like this in New Mexico?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I have never been there.”

“I hope it is,” Sun says. “We can stay – as long as we need to? You will stay – you won’t leave?”

“No, I won’t leave.”

She doesn’t know if he says this because Ben has told him to stay with her or if Sayid has decided this on his own, but the determination in his voice convinces her that he means it. Relief washes over her and she realizes that she needs him with her. She thinks that maybe if they are together they will be able to keep each other safe. Maybe, a voice whispers in the back of her mind, maybe you will be able to save each other.

She touches his arm, her fingertips feeling cool on his warm skin as they slide down to his wrist. He stares at her hand, a puzzled frown on his forehead, as if he can’t understand why she would touch him. It makes her smile, because at this moment she can’t not touch him. It feels right to have this kind of contact, slight as it is.

She doesn’t take his hand in hers, instead just loosely encircling his wrist. Her thumb moves slowly over the back of his hand. He meets her eyes and there’s something there she hasn’t seen yet, something questioning and soft and tentative. He slides his hand into hers and she laces their fingers together and squeezes and it makes something click into place inside her. After years of so many things being wrong, it’s a shock that something so small feels so right. She smiles at him and it makes her chest tighten when, after a moment, there’s an answering smile on his lips that slowly makes its way up to his eyes.

“We should go,” he says. “We have a long drive ahead of us.” She nods and drops his hand and they make their way, side by side, back to the car.


End file.
